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Category Archives: Irritating

Four days in the hospital is approximately three days too many. The first day, you’re all, HECK YEAH, I can watch this TBS marathon of “Friends” from the comfort of this Craftmatic adjustable bed while this lovely lady from food service delivers me french toast that I neither had to prepare nor have to clean up. Then, day two arrives and everything is terrible until the minute you are discharged.

If your first IV gets kinked, a nurse will place a second IV. If your second IV is infiltrated, your hand will swell up like a baseball glove and a nurse will place a third IV. If your third IV blows within just a few hours, they will call a nurse from the intensive care unit’s special “IV Team” to place a fourth IV. When it is all over, you will be able to rattle off your IV stats like a sports analysis: four IVs placed out of six attempts.

If there are no beds in the regular recovery section of the hospital, they will place you in the cardiac care wing which, demographically, skews a little older. They will choose your roommate carefully with a nurse explaining that they found a patient for you to bunk with that was, “a little closer in age.” That patient will turn out to be… 60. Also, when your kids visit you, their glowing youth and vibrant health will ensure they are treated like Golden Retriever therapy puppies by everyone in the halls and they will, therefore, be hugged extensively by strangers.

You will discover, tragically, that narcotic pain relievers do not sit well with you thus shattering any dreams of a narcotic-fueled life of crime on the run because you would have to pause to vomit every 30 minutes and the police would surely catch up to you.

The very minute you start to think, hmm, our health care flexible spending account still has a balance in September. That’s pretty remarkable. CONTACTS FOR EVERYONE THIS YEAR! That very minute – the very minute! – when you think of all of the things you’re going to buy with your extra FSA money – NAME BRAND CHARACTER BANDAIDS – is the exact moment when your appendix will burst or your kid breaks an arm or your diverticulitis flares up.

You’ll start to resent everyone that can just… walk around on their own. Logically, you know that the person in the hall wearing regular shoes instead of non-slippy socks isn’t, like, showing off or anything but it still feels like they kind of are. You’ll start to mutter to yourself, “I bet that lady over there doesn’t have a headache.” Or, “That dude over there doesn’t look nauseated.” The ability of others to exist without crippling pain will bring a not insignificant amount of irritation. ESPECIALLY when your 60-year-old roommate gets discharged before you and she is wearing regular clothes and no amount of french toast can make up for that kind of jealousy.

You will be given so many different IV antibiotics that you begin to get to know each of them. Not by name but by how they make you feel when they’re administered. The one shrouded in brown because it shouldn’t be exposed to light is especially terrible. You suspect the one in brown is responsible for your super duper heightened sense of smell which, by the way, is just the absolute worst superpower to have. Especially in the hospital. It’s almost like you can smell the very molecules in the air around you. Your new super smell capabilities means you will accuse your husband repeatedly of having very bad breath which will give him a little bit of a complex. He does not, in fact, have very bad breath and you will apologize profusely for the false accusation once you are home and off of the IV antibiotics and no longer able to smell each atom of matter that surrounds you.

The nurses will be amazing and their kindness for your condition will make you weepy and when they finally send you home, you will be a little sad that no one brings you french toast anymore.

One of the great things about our school district is the delayed start time for middle and high school students. The older kids start AFTER the elementary kids. Instead of being the first ones on the bus, they are the last ones on the bus. I’m pretty sure the school district’s scheduling decisions were based on lots of science and not, say, an unmitigated fear of what teenagers are like when they’ve had to rise before the sun. Little kids usually wake first while big kids tend to sleep in. It’s all very logical and makes sense and I think it would work really well for families with kids that aren’t broken like mine. Because mine are broken and this setup has been terrible for us.

My two youngest, elementary-aged children would sleep until the average Sunday brunch time each and every day if I would let them. They are both extremely difficult to motivate in the early morning hours. Simply raising their heads off of their pillows seems like a monumental task, so crushing are their grade school responsibilities. Meanwhile, my oldest child, my middle schooler, could watch the director’s cut of “Titanic” in the free time he has each day between when he’s ready for school and when he has to leave to catch the bus. He has so many minutes to burn that he actually gets bored, inevitably following me from room to room trying to discuss some sports thing as I’m deep-breathing my way through my first cup of coffee while simultaneously packing lunches, trying to find PE-approved shoes, stuffing the green folder in backpacks, and imploring his younger siblings to please, for the love, JUST GET OUT OF BED.

Anyway, in summary, I spent most of last school year trying unsuccessfully to wake Charlie and Millie up while pretending to listen to Henry talk about football. It was just as much fun as it seems! If you’re guessing that there was a lot of rage involved in our morning routine, you are guessing correctly.

And, let it be known that I tried really, really hard last year to be kind and gentle and loving and patient and to not say the really bad curse words before 7:00 a.m. I had Waffle Wednesdays and French Toast Fridays and special lunch box treats and hugs and kisses and all manner of gentle encouragement to get those two little kids up and out the door. Morning after endless morning, it did not work.

None of it worked. I always ended up yelling. Every time. So much yelling.

I vowed, Scarlett O’Hara-style, that this school year would be different. Because, I simply cannot have another year full of red hot rage over having to doula my children through their before school routines. I just cannot. I need greater independence from my perfectly capable children.

Last year, we tried out alarm clocks but it went poorly. In an era when you can, essentially, just yell commands in the direction of your phone or your Echo or your iPad or your mother, the complicated multi-step process of setting alarm clocks proved problematic for the youngest of our household. Each morning, Millie would turn her bleeping alarm clock off by… unplugging it. Effective, yes, but also not very efficient. That meant, each evening, we’d have to sit down and reset the time and then the alarms and also the snooze capabilities confused each of them and we basically abandoned the alarm clocks pretty early on in the school year.

This year, I procured a Google Home Mini for Charlie. Voice commands make it easy for him to set the alarm and also, as a bonus, I can always tell when he’s awake in the morning because I can hear him yelling from his bed at the top of his lungs, “HEY GOOGLE STOP STOP GOOGLE STOP.” Millie is still using an old-school alarm clock for now because her bedroom most closely resembles our local landfill and I’m using the Google Mini as the dangling carrot in my cleanup scheme. She’s only unplugged her alarm twice this year (so far) so I can confidently claim that we seem to have rounded that learning curve.

In an effort to further streamline our morning routine, I also bought these great dry-erase charts that I hung on the back of the kids’ bedroom doors outlining what they need to do every day. These charts are working great in that Charlie and Millie remember to ignore them almost every day.

However, laying out the next day’s outfit the night before is critical for Millie since she is forever picking things to wear to school that she actually can’t wear to school. She always picks a miniskirt and sandals on gym days or wants to wear her gymnastics leotard on library days. Laying out her outfit the night before means I can fight with her about her clothing choices at the end of the day when I’m exhausted instead of fighting with her first thing in the morning when I’m also exhausted. The whole process is very frustrating but also adorable in that Millie literally lays out her outfits.

The charts are colorful and cute and all but I’m actually thinking about just laminating instructional signs and hanging them all over my house instead. Every morning is this hamster wheel exercise in asking my kids over and over and over again if they have their shoes or their library books or their sweatshirts or asking if they’ve brushed their hair and washed their faces. I’m tired of the sound of my own voice. Signs would make this way easier. Want to know what to pack in your lunch? There’s a sign for that! Asking me repeatedly what you need for flag football practice? Reference the sign! Curious how you can brush your teeth without leaving the bathroom looking like someone was murdered with Crest? I have a sign for that!

It wouldn’t be pretty to look at but at least any houseguests we may have would know how to pour themselves their own bowl of cereal in five easy steps.

I don’t want to seem overly confident or anything and I know we’re not that deep into the school year yet but I have super high hopes for less rage this year with our charts and our instructional signs and our more advanced alarm clocks. Last year was so endlessly frustrating that I think it can only get better from here, right? I mean, even if this year still proves maddening, I can always look forward to the middle and high school years with their later start times. That’s only – let me check my math here – FIVE YEARS AWAY.

I love making pizzas on Sundays. Mostly because it takes forever and I usually have the luxury of time on Sundays. There’s cheese to shred and sauce to make and toppings to prep and dough to flour and stretch. Homemade pizza will absolutely, hands-down be the food highlight of the week for my family. It can – and will – only go down from here.

Bob – “This is delicious pizza! That broccoli topping is crazy good.”
Millie – “This is amazing! You are amazing! Did you make more than one pizza? Two? Only two? Okay then. Can I take the leftovers in my lunch tomorrow though?”
Henry – “THE BROCCOLI JUST DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE. YOU DON’T PUT BROCCOLI ON PIZZA.”
Charlie – “So, is this sauce the spicy sauce? Because sometimes we have pizza that has spicy sauce on it and I don’t care for the sauce that is spicy. But, if this sauce isn’t spicy, I’ll like it. As long as it isn’t spicy.”

Monday: TACOS!

If I had my act together, we would have tacos on Tuesday because Taco Tuesday is more alliterative than Taco Monday but I never, ever have my act together. Ever. So, Taco Monday it is! Because EVERYONE loves tacos! EVERYONE!

Bob – Piles plate high with romaine lettuce, avocado, tomatoes, and several fresh vegetables managing to make me feel awful about all of the tacos on my plate, of which there are many tacos.
Millie – Inaudible words in between grunts of satisfaction as she shovels tortilla chips piled with taco fillings in her face.
Henry – “I just invented cheese tacos! Just taco shells! With nothing but cheese! That’s it! So easy!”
Charlie – “I’ll take the rice.” Covers the rice in ketchup before eating.

Tuesday: Spaghetti

I’ve been making my mother’s spaghetti sauce recipe for years and it is unbelievably delicious. I grew up eating a lot of spaghetti and just the smell of the sauce simmering on the stove conjures up wonderful memories of my entire family – sisters, brother, parents – gathered around the kitchen table in our home in Indiana laughing and talking and sharing stories. Those are some of my favorite memories from my childhood. It’s a really good sauce is my point here. Also, it is literally deconstructed pizza and the kids love pizza so…

I am a cool mom and cool moms sometimes throw caution to the wind and get all wild and stuff and fix BREAKFAST FOR DINNER. Woo-hoo! And, sometimes, we even fix breakfast for dinner when daddy ISN’T EVEN OUT OF TOWN. Pancakes for everyone!

Bob – “Um, yeah, so I’m just going to fix myself a salad.”
Millie – “THIS IS SO FUN!”
Henry – Reluctantly eats a couple of syrup-less pancakes knowing full well he’ll return to the kitchen an hour before bed and fix a plate of something coated entirely in peanut butter.
Charlie – “So, are these regular pancakes? Or, the pancakes that have those little bits of apple in them? Because I can taste those little bits of apple and I don’t really like those little bits of apples that you put in the pancakes so I really hope there isn’t little bits of apple in these.” Covers the pancakes in 1/4 cup of syrup before eating.

Thursday: Soup and Sandwich Night!

I’m running out of steam. And, love for my family.

Bob – “Hold the mayo!” This seems more a lunch than a dinner but I’m going to honor my wife’s hard work and the sheer determination it takes for her to feed her family many times a day. I will devour this soup and gamely eat this turkey sandwich. As long as it’s on that healthy bread I like that has all those nuts and seeds. The kind that makes the kids cry when it’s all that’s left for toast.
Millie – “I just love ALL of this. Soup! Sandwiches! What a GREAT combination! Did you think of this yourself?”
Henry – “So, you’re suggesting a grilled cheese but with, like, turkey on it? Let me think about it.”
Charlie – “I’ll be in my room.”

Because we (and by we, I’m referring exclusively to my self-esteem) badly need a win at this point.

Bob – It’s Friday. I can tell she’s getting tired.
Millie – “I’m never moving out. Promise me you’ll cook for me forever.”
Henry – “TATOR TOTS! MY FAVORITE!”
Charlie – “Which kind of chicken nuggets are these because sometimes, I don’t really like the kind of chicken nuggets you get. Do you know the chicken nuggets I’m talking about? The chicken nuggets that look just like these chicken nuggets but they’re a little different kind of chicken nuggets? Those are the chicken nuggets that I’m not really a fan of. Are these those chicken nuggets?” Starts guzzling ketchup directly from the bottle.